I'm writing about Zacualpa two weeks after visiting there, and after having visited Nebaj, Rabinal and Comalapa, all of which are areas that are relatively "new" to me. I had visited Nebaj once before, but just for two days, and it wasn't really research. A friend had invited me to pass the New Year with her, so I squeezed in a short visit to Nebaj, but really only spent time with her and her family. We did attend the installation of the new auxiliary indigenous authorities, in a formal ceremony followed by a lavish meal at the home of one, who happened to be my friend's aunt. Granted, I had established a relationship with a important community leader in Nebaj, and that smoothed the way for my research. But I had never visited Rabinal or Comalapa before, and just established contacts there shortly before visiting.
So the irony is, that I did not find anyone in Zacualpa -- a place I had visited on numerous previous occasions -- who was available to talk to me about anything -- that is, anyone who could give me any insight into the decision to preserve the chapels, to create a memory site in the church. To return to the narrative of my visit, I arrived at the cloister not having succeeded in making any advance contact. I walked in and talked to a very pleasant nun who told me that Juliana was out. I hadn't had any way of reaching Juliana before I arrived -- I had once had a phone number for her, many years ago, but that was on a cell phone that has long since been either lost, stolen or out of use. The nun told me that she didn't know when Juliana would be back and I said I would wait, and would use the time to look around the chapels. I took photographs and detailed notes. Then Juliana arrived, looking somewhat flustered. I greeted her and explained that I had wanted to talk with her and apologized for not having gotten in touch with her beforehand, and showing up unannounced, but said that I hadn't known how to reach her and no longer had her phone number. She said that she had lost her phone some time ago and hadn't replaced it (so I wouldn't have been in any better shape if I had had her phone number). But she didn't seem especially friendly or glad to see me. She told me she was busy, that she had to make up packages that had to be sent to Italy. I told her I would be happy to help her; she could just tell me what to do and I would follow her instructions and we could talk as we packed. But she demurred -- I don't remember precisely what she said but it was clear she didn't want my help. And she said she had to go out and get more materials for the packages.
I asked her when she thought she might be finished -- tomorrow? Another day? I said that I could come back to Zacualpa at another time. She gave a vague answer, she didn't know how long it would be. Next week sometime, I asked? She wouldn't say. I didn't want to keep her, so I apologized again. I asked her if there were someone else who could talk with me. She mentioned the name of one man and said that I could talk with him. I noted it down and thanked her.
Now, big caveat here. I know full well that when a researcher shows up unannounced, people have their everyday lives in full swing and they are not going to drop everything to accommodate my schedule. So I didn't expect to be greeted with a brass band. But this was someone I had known and spoken with during earlier visits. She had always greeted me with a warm smile, and had on some occasions gone out of her way to walk me over to the home of someone she thought I should meet. So, I would have expected her to at least express some pleasure at my presence (as had the nun whom I had never met before; she ushered me into her office, sat down and calmly heard me out; she made me feel very welcome, even though she was relatively new to the parish and was not even from Guatemala). But there was no warmth or pleasure from Juliana, and I left the parish with pages of notes on what I had seen, but without anyone providing some back story and context. Obviously she had many other things on her mind, on her plate, and I was just parachuting in for a quick stop, so perhaps I shouldn't have expected more.
The priest who had initiated (so I had been told) the project had died some years back. And most of the nuns who had been involved were no longer in this parish.
Somewhat disappointed, I left the parish and wandered through the market. Many years back I had befriended a young woman named Ana who had a small shop selling fabric and artisanal items, and I thought I could find my way by memory to her shop, and so I did. She was there, and pleasantly surprised to see me. We chatted a bit about family and so forth. returned to Doña Caty's home and told her what had happened. She was surprised. So we talked about who else could help me. She mentioned the same man that Juliana had mentioned, and told me that he lived about a block away. She gave me rough instructions about where to find his house, and told me that he was related in some way to Doña Caty, or at least that Doña Caty knew him.
I returned to Doña Caty's house and told her what had happened. She, too, thought it was strange that Juliana had not wanted to talk with me (that was how she put it; I preferred to view it "she was not able to talk with" but Doña Caty insisted that it was "didn't want to talk"). Not about to argue with my hostess. I told her about the man that both Juliana and Ana (my friend) had mentioned. Doña Caty said that he was related to her ex-husband and that she wasn't the person to introduce me to him because there was still bitterness, and that she thought he wouldn't be likely to want to talk in any case.
She thought a bit and then mentioned a woman whom she knew who had been active in the church, and could possibly talk with me. We walked to the store that the woman's family ran, but we were told that she was out selling at the market (by this time it was Sunday, market day in Zacualpa, and so all shops are open and many small shop keepers whose establishments are farther away from the market open up a stall in the market to take advantage of the opportunity to make some sales.
So, we said we'd wait until the woman returned. She arrived in about 10 or 15 minutes, but seemed a bit flustered. "Ay, if you had told me in advance, I would have made some time", she said. "But I've just gotten back from the market and I'm tired." So we said goodbye and left.
As we walked back to Doña Caty's house, she remarked "She didn't want to talk." She went on, "I'm not sure why no one wants to talk." I said I didn't understand either, since I wasn't asking anyone to talk about their experiences or their losses during the conflict, just how the parish set up the chapels and got the mural painted.
So, I had to leave it at that. I saw what I could see, took notes, took photographs, and will have to interpret or describe as best I can on my own.
Yes, I'm an outsider. Yes, I only came for a short time and we all know that in order to really do in depth fieldwork you need to spend a long time in the community. But Juliana is someone I know, or at least someone I knew. And, as I noted earlier, in the communities where I really had only contacted people for the first time a day or two in advance of my visit, they were much more welcoming. These other places were not communities where there was no conflict or contestation over history. As I will describe in another blog, the posters along the outside wall of the cemetery in Rabinal were torn up. Monuments installed in the cemetery were defaced and damaged. So the history of the war, and which narrative(s) get told, is still being debated in these other places.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
Zaculpa: las capillas
Returning to our trip around the cloister in Zacualpa, the cloister is a beautiful and tranquil space. It's hard to imagine what it must have looked and felt like during the conflict, when it was turned into a veritable charnel-house. There are a few small well-tended courtyards, flush with plants, and garden in the back. There are dormitories and classrooms, a kitchen and dining room for the nuns, along with their living quarters, and an office. I may be leaving something out, as I didn't poke into every nook and cranny. Within the cloister there are two small chapels, one of which was used for torture - -this is the one closest to the entrance. And the second chapel, farther back, was used as a mass grave.
But before you get to the first chapel there are two more walls, after the mural, that illustrate some of the relevant history. They contain framed or mounted photographs with captions, including ones that document some of the forensic work and exhumations that uncovered the remains of many of the victims. The image on the left shows one wall of photographs and the image on the right is the first photograph. The caption describes the entire town being affected after the army occupied the church in 1981. The town was semi-deserted. "In the rural hamlets the population was razed to the ground, hundreds of men, women, children and old people were assassinated and displaced, their homes and crops destroyed."
Subsequent photographs show results of exhumations, with careful labels about the date and site. Some include human remains -- to the left is a skull and a good part of a human skeleton, with the label "Potrero Viejo" (one of the aldeas that is fairly close to the town center). "The ones who were kidnapped, disappeared, those that were buried alive, those who were killed, were located together with the evidence of the martyrdom that they were subjected to before dying."
Other photographs, in color, show some of the funeral processions. An important part of the process is the identification, more recently through DNA testing, of the remains. I was told that it sometimes takes up to 10 years for a positive identification to be made. Then the remains are returned to the families for reburial. In some cases victims were able to be identified by other means (fragments of clothing or jewelry, other forms of identification). Very often several sets of remains were returned at the same time and so there were group reburials, solemn and significant community events.
Burial in one's home soil is very important to Mayans, whether they are Catholic, Evangelical or practice traditional Mayan spirituality (or some combination of Catholicism/Evangelical Christianity and Mayan spirituality). People regularly visit the graves of their deceased loved ones, not only on the Day of the Dead but at other times throughout the year (the person's birthday, the anniversary of his or her death if known). So even having a small part of a loved one's body or fragment of clothing means that their spirit can finally rest once it is buried.
Along the wall facing the entrance, the wall that forms the outside of the Capilla de Tortura, the Chapel of Torture, are more photographs, these ones unframed and covered in plastic wrap, making it hard to photograph without some glare from the daylight.
The chapel itself has been changed somewhat since I was there several years ago. I have photographs from that time, and those are the images that are etched in my mind. When I first visited, there were bloody handprints visible on one of the walls. The nun who showed me the chapel, Sor Ana Maria, explained to me that some Italian volunteers had come to work on cleaning up the church and they had started to wash off the handprints. Someone from the church stopped them before they could eradicate them completely, explaining that it was important that the traces of the war be left for people to remember. There was a piece of the floor that had been turned into a lid or door, with a handle, covering up an area where bodies had been interred; the top was left open and the bare earth left exposed.
Now the chapel looks much "cleaner". The hole in the floor has been covered up. There is a carved and painted statue of a woman kneeling, wearing the traditional garments of Zacualpa. There is still one metal door handle on one of the rafters -- these were used to hang torture victims by their hands. And there is still an array of small wooden crosses made by victims' relatives, bearing names and dates (if known), hanging from the ceiling. But it somehow looked more sanitized, less hand-made, than it had years back. I am looking through some photographs but I cannot find the originals from 2009 or 2010 when I first visited, just images on powerpoint presentations that I cannot figure out how to copy.
The second chapel, La Capilla del Pozo (the chapel of the grave or tomb) is a darker, more reflective space. There are thirteen beautifully carved dark wooden chairs, the size usually considered "child-sized", lined around the perimeter of the room. I don't know if the number 13 was deliberate, or if that was simply an accident. There is a table on one side, a cross on the wall in the front, and an exposed patch of dirt in the middle. As you can see in the photograph on the right, it is round, ringed with flower petals, a ring of white and a ring of yellow petals, with a vase of flowers in the center of the ring. A cross made of flower petals extends below, forming the symbol for "woman". There was no one to talk with me and tell me how or why this came to be. Clearly, the candles and flowers are replenished every so often, but I am not clear on who precisely tends this chapel, whether it is just one of the duties rotated among the various nuns who are assigned to this parish, or whether it is a group of lay people from the community.
One final artifact in the cloister caught my eye: a small poster on an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, in a plastic sleeve, taped on a wall under a light switch, reading "Jesuit network with migrants Guatemala". The church has also houses a small office where volunteers have provided some advice and support to returned or deported migrants; I wasn't able to find out whether that office is still functioning but I did visit it on some of my earlier trips to Guatemala.
But before you get to the first chapel there are two more walls, after the mural, that illustrate some of the relevant history. They contain framed or mounted photographs with captions, including ones that document some of the forensic work and exhumations that uncovered the remains of many of the victims. The image on the left shows one wall of photographs and the image on the right is the first photograph. The caption describes the entire town being affected after the army occupied the church in 1981. The town was semi-deserted. "In the rural hamlets the population was razed to the ground, hundreds of men, women, children and old people were assassinated and displaced, their homes and crops destroyed."
Subsequent photographs show results of exhumations, with careful labels about the date and site. Some include human remains -- to the left is a skull and a good part of a human skeleton, with the label "Potrero Viejo" (one of the aldeas that is fairly close to the town center). "The ones who were kidnapped, disappeared, those that were buried alive, those who were killed, were located together with the evidence of the martyrdom that they were subjected to before dying."
Other photographs, in color, show some of the funeral processions. An important part of the process is the identification, more recently through DNA testing, of the remains. I was told that it sometimes takes up to 10 years for a positive identification to be made. Then the remains are returned to the families for reburial. In some cases victims were able to be identified by other means (fragments of clothing or jewelry, other forms of identification). Very often several sets of remains were returned at the same time and so there were group reburials, solemn and significant community events.
Burial in one's home soil is very important to Mayans, whether they are Catholic, Evangelical or practice traditional Mayan spirituality (or some combination of Catholicism/Evangelical Christianity and Mayan spirituality). People regularly visit the graves of their deceased loved ones, not only on the Day of the Dead but at other times throughout the year (the person's birthday, the anniversary of his or her death if known). So even having a small part of a loved one's body or fragment of clothing means that their spirit can finally rest once it is buried.
Along the wall facing the entrance, the wall that forms the outside of the Capilla de Tortura, the Chapel of Torture, are more photographs, these ones unframed and covered in plastic wrap, making it hard to photograph without some glare from the daylight.The chapel itself has been changed somewhat since I was there several years ago. I have photographs from that time, and those are the images that are etched in my mind. When I first visited, there were bloody handprints visible on one of the walls. The nun who showed me the chapel, Sor Ana Maria, explained to me that some Italian volunteers had come to work on cleaning up the church and they had started to wash off the handprints. Someone from the church stopped them before they could eradicate them completely, explaining that it was important that the traces of the war be left for people to remember. There was a piece of the floor that had been turned into a lid or door, with a handle, covering up an area where bodies had been interred; the top was left open and the bare earth left exposed.
Now the chapel looks much "cleaner". The hole in the floor has been covered up. There is a carved and painted statue of a woman kneeling, wearing the traditional garments of Zacualpa. There is still one metal door handle on one of the rafters -- these were used to hang torture victims by their hands. And there is still an array of small wooden crosses made by victims' relatives, bearing names and dates (if known), hanging from the ceiling. But it somehow looked more sanitized, less hand-made, than it had years back. I am looking through some photographs but I cannot find the originals from 2009 or 2010 when I first visited, just images on powerpoint presentations that I cannot figure out how to copy.
The second chapel, La Capilla del Pozo (the chapel of the grave or tomb) is a darker, more reflective space. There are thirteen beautifully carved dark wooden chairs, the size usually considered "child-sized", lined around the perimeter of the room. I don't know if the number 13 was deliberate, or if that was simply an accident. There is a table on one side, a cross on the wall in the front, and an exposed patch of dirt in the middle. As you can see in the photograph on the right, it is round, ringed with flower petals, a ring of white and a ring of yellow petals, with a vase of flowers in the center of the ring. A cross made of flower petals extends below, forming the symbol for "woman". There was no one to talk with me and tell me how or why this came to be. Clearly, the candles and flowers are replenished every so often, but I am not clear on who precisely tends this chapel, whether it is just one of the duties rotated among the various nuns who are assigned to this parish, or whether it is a group of lay people from the community.
One final artifact in the cloister caught my eye: a small poster on an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, in a plastic sleeve, taped on a wall under a light switch, reading "Jesuit network with migrants Guatemala". The church has also houses a small office where volunteers have provided some advice and support to returned or deported migrants; I wasn't able to find out whether that office is still functioning but I did visit it on some of my earlier trips to Guatemala. Zacualpa lagniappe: Doña Caty
Doña Catarina, or Doña Caty, was more than generous in opening her home to me, and trying her best to provide me with contacts for people who might talk with me about the various markers and memory sites. At first, she hadn't quite understood what I was after -- she thought that I wanted to talk with people about the war itself. It took a few minutes of conversation face to face -- not over the phone or via WhatsApp messages -- to explain that I was really interested in the representation of the war more than people's experiences of the traumas.
As we spent time together over the two days I was in Zacualpa, she told me a little of her own story. She was a mother with young children when the army attacked. She wasn't living in the house she currently occupies but in an aldea. She fled with her children, and joined people who had also fled to (relative) safety in the mountains and forests. I don't know whether she was technically living in what were considered Comunidades del Pueblo en Resistencia (Communities of People in Resistance) -- that term usually refers to settlements that were established by people who had to flee as longer-term refuges. When I was in Nebaj, I talked to people who had lived in the CPRs for 14, 15 or 16 years. It wasn't entirely clear in our conversation exactly how long Doña Caty stayed in the mountains with a group of people -- it seems like several months at least, possibly longer.
She told me that she had trained as a comadrona -- a midwife. So while she and her children were in hiding, she attended to pregnant women who were giving birth in the mountains, as well as women with young children, since there were no other medical people around. I hadn't known she was a midwife, and I don't think she attends births any more, as she is very occupied with her work as a leader and organizer.
She had been active as a local leader in CCDA, the Comité Campesino para el Desarrollo del Altiplano, when I first met her in 2011, and also worked with victims of domestic violence. On one of the two mornings I was there, I came back to the house at midday to find her downstairs "sala" (it means both "hall" and "living room") filled to overflowing with women (and about 3 men) who were gathered for a regional meeting of CCDA. Although the meeting was entirely in K'iche', she invited me to come in and explained who I was. I asked her if I could have a moment to tell them about the human rights delegation that I had been part of in 2018, since part of our mission was to talk with members of CCDA about the threats and assassinations that members of the organization had experienced. She agreed; I spoke for just a couple of minutes and then she translated (or summarized) into K'iche' for me. After that everyone wanted to take a picture with me. There were too many to fit into a single frame inside the cramped room so we took a couple (one of which is above).
As we spent time together over the two days I was in Zacualpa, she told me a little of her own story. She was a mother with young children when the army attacked. She wasn't living in the house she currently occupies but in an aldea. She fled with her children, and joined people who had also fled to (relative) safety in the mountains and forests. I don't know whether she was technically living in what were considered Comunidades del Pueblo en Resistencia (Communities of People in Resistance) -- that term usually refers to settlements that were established by people who had to flee as longer-term refuges. When I was in Nebaj, I talked to people who had lived in the CPRs for 14, 15 or 16 years. It wasn't entirely clear in our conversation exactly how long Doña Caty stayed in the mountains with a group of people -- it seems like several months at least, possibly longer.
She had been active as a local leader in CCDA, the Comité Campesino para el Desarrollo del Altiplano, when I first met her in 2011, and also worked with victims of domestic violence. On one of the two mornings I was there, I came back to the house at midday to find her downstairs "sala" (it means both "hall" and "living room") filled to overflowing with women (and about 3 men) who were gathered for a regional meeting of CCDA. Although the meeting was entirely in K'iche', she invited me to come in and explained who I was. I asked her if I could have a moment to tell them about the human rights delegation that I had been part of in 2018, since part of our mission was to talk with members of CCDA about the threats and assassinations that members of the organization had experienced. She agreed; I spoke for just a couple of minutes and then she translated (or summarized) into K'iche' for me. After that everyone wanted to take a picture with me. There were too many to fit into a single frame inside the cramped room so we took a couple (one of which is above).
Leaving the city: return to Zacualpa. The mural in the cloister.
While I wanted to speak to the people who had established the small museum on La Sexta, La Casa de la Memoria Kaji Tulam, I decided that I needed to get out of the city and visit what I had determined would be the three principal sites for the article that I plan to write (that I agreed to write). So I packed up and readied myself to travel back to the department of el Quiché, which I have not visited in several years.
My original connection with El Quiché, and the reason I had chosen to live in the department when I did my Fulbright in 2011, was through the Mayan community in New Bedford. Nearly all of the Maya in New Bedford were from El Quiché, and most of them were from 3 or 4 towns clustered in one part of the department: Chinique, Zacualpa, and San Andres Sajcabajá. There were a few from other towns: Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiché, and the Ixcán.
I had initially visited Zacualpa because several of the immigrants who were caught up in the 2007 ICE raid that resulted in 361 people being taken into detention were from Zacualpa, and I had come to visit their families. I had visited the parish hall several times during the years that I either lived in El Quiché or traveled there more regularly, but had never really systematically examined all the details and taken notes.
I was hoping to be able to talk to someone in the parish who was familiar with the history of the establishment of the two chapels that have been turned into memory sites. The nun whom I had met when I first traveled to Zacualpa in 2009, Sor Ana Maria, who had first shown me the chapel of torture, was no longer in Guatemala; I knew from her Facebook posts that she was doing mission work in Africa although I hadn't kept close tabs on her. Sor Ana Maria had taken me along with her in her jeep to visit some rural communities where she went to deliver messages against early marriage (families effectively selling off their 13 and 14-year old daughters). There was another woman I'd met at the church, named Juliana. She wasn't a nun but lived in the parish and worked there. People referred to her as Hermana (sister) Juliana, as distinguished from Sor -- which also means sister but refers specifically to a member of a religious order. She had always been very friendly to me, taking me to meet people in the community. Once she escorted me to the house of an older man who was involved in some of the parish's projects. I sometimes was invited to have tea or lunch with the nuns and Juliana.
But this was all years ago and I hadn't kept in touch with people in Zacualpa very much. One of the families of New Bedford migrants that I had visited many times ended up leaving Zacualpa and moving to another community because of threats; all the remaining members have now come to the United States.
So, I was trying to figure out how to re-establish some contact with someone there. There was a woman I'd met through the women's organization that I'd volunteered with, Asociación por Nosotras Ixmukané, named Doña Catarina Hernández or Doña Caty as most people called her. She was very active with a number of organizations, not just Ixmukané. She was a local leader with a national peasant rights organization, CCDA (the Comité Campesina para el Desarrollo del Altiplano), and a women's rights advocate. I'd been in touch with her a few times around 2012 and 2013because she had been helping someone I knew who was a victim of gender-based violence. We'd re-established contact through Facebook and I knew that she had become active in one of the small leftist political parties, Winaq (this was the party that had fielded Rigoberta Menchú for president in 2011). The word "winaq" means both "people" or "person" and the number 20 in K'iche'. I was taught that the reason the same word stands for both "person" and "20" is that we have 20 digits (10 toes, 10 fingers), so it's symbolic in Mayan mathematics.
I'd reached out to Doña Caty and explained (I thought) my project and asked if she could help find people in the parish who could talk with me. I'd specifically asked to see if she could find Juliana, because I'd read a description of the chapels However, she'd been very busy traveling around at meetings and workshops and the one time she'd been able to stop by the parish
Most of the times I've traveled to el Quiché it's been in my own vehicle, so I've had the freedom to leave when I wanted.. but also the necessity of dealing with asshole drivers (which abound in this country) and maneuvering in what is sometimes treacherous and endless traffic. Lines that snake and barely move for what seems like (and sometimes is) literally hours on end. There is often construction on some part of the Inter-American highway, the main roadway that runs roughly northwest from the capital. It just skirts the edge of El Quiché, at an intersection called Los Encuentros (the encounters) and then heads off towards Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, and the border will Mexico at a place called La Mesilla. There is a fork in the road at Los Encuentros; all sides of the intersection are lined with small food stands selling sausages, grilled corn, grilled meats, and other quick bites. The highway that continues on to the Mexican border is a four-lane road for part of the way, and then dwindles back to two lanes (I don't know what it does after Huehuetenango since I've never traveled farther north). But the road going into El Quiché is full of speed bumps and hairpin turns that wind up and down mountains. I think I once counted all the speed bumps between Los Encuentros and Chichicastenango, which is about 18 kilometers north, and there were over 60.
I packed my bags and got an Uber to take me to the bus "terminal" (basically just an area where a lot of buses line up in seeming chaos, and men roam around shouting out the names of destinations and hustling passengers onto the appropriate (one hopes) buses. I managed to get myself onto a bus to Los Encuentros, and aside from the always-interminable traffic leaving the city, the trip was uneventful. Well, and aside from the fact that the bus "jockey" whom I asked about buses to Zacualpa gave me incorrect information -- not surprising. Everyone around the bus terminal is being paid by drivers for one or another bus company -- there are countless small bus companies, all unregulated. We stopped and asked for the name of a particular company that Doña Caty had told me about, but were told that there weren't any more buses that day leaving directly from the capital. Because it was so chaotic at the terminal, and I had a large suitcase, and didn't want to go traipsing back and forth asking multiple times about buses, I agreed to get on a bus to Los Encuentros and change buses there. I was successfully deposited off the bus at Los Encuentros, made my way across the busy intersection to the road that heads off into El Quiché, only to see the exact bus that I had been looking for in the capital come by about 15 minutes later and take on passengers (one of whom was me). Fortunately, Doña Caty lives right along the bus route. I called her when I was getting close to Zacualpa and she asked to speak to the driver or the ayudante, saying "I travel on those buses all the time and I know all the drivers." So I passed the phone to the ayudante and she told him where to drop me (I had been to her house before, but traveling with a group so I hadn't had to really take note of exactly where it was situated along the main road).
Duly delivered at my destination, I then set out to see if I could talk with anyone at the parroquia. Doña Caty told me that she hadn't been able to get there until one evening that week, and by the time she arrived there really wasn't anyone around for her to talk with. So I decided that the best plan was just to walk over and see if I could talk to anyone, and if not, just take note of what I found.
The cloister where the nuns live is directly to the left as you face the main church building, which lies at one end of the central plaza of the town. There is a courtyard as you enter, with a large white cross in the center of the courtyard with the word "Martires" (Martyrs) spelled out in metal letters emanating from the top of the cross. The cross was added more recently, I think in 2012 or 2013 -- it definitely wasn't there when I visited Zacualpa numerous times in 2011. More recent additions include a slide and some swings for children who accompany their parents to church or market.
One side of the courtyard (to the right in this photo) is the external wall of the church). Straight ahead, the "back walls" of some of the rooms of the cloister. The other two sides contain offices and meeting rooms for various sub-entities of the parish, with a covered walkway (portico or colonnade, if you want to get all architectural) that provides shade, and also a place for people to sit as they wait -- either to be attended in one of the offices, or simply to have a place to rest. On market days (Sundays) the courtyard is usually pretty crowded with people seeking shade and seating.
I rang the buzzer at the entrance to the cloister and a pleasant-faced nun answered. I explained what I was there for, that I had been to the church many times before, and had known Sor Ana Maria, and had spoken to Hermana Juliana in the past. She told me that she had only been at the parish for two years, and that Juliana had gone out and she wasn't sure when she would be back.
Therefore, I decided to use my time by just looking at the facilities and taking detailed notes. The first wall after you enter the cloister is covered with the mural that you see on the right. The legend at the top reads, "When everything (or everyone) came to light, that revived (or resuscitated) my people (or my town)."
The trajectory of the mural is similar to the much larger ones I saw at the Police Archives and later in Comalapa. You "read" the murals from left to right, and they start either with the "before" (before the invasion, before the war) or the "during", and then end with the aftermath and the future.
This one begins with the "during", with hamlets ablaze, people fleeing. Soldiers with automatic weapons loom over the scene of disaster, and one menacing helmeted soldier peers over. In the center is the church building with smoke coming out of the roof, followed by figures of priests and nuns. At the very center is the figure of Monseñor Juan Gerardi, the Archbishop of Guatemala City, who initiated the massive church-sponsored project of gathering testimonies about what happened in the armed conflict, La Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (The Recovery of Historical Memory, colloquially referred to as REMHI). I've written about Msr. Gerardi before but am repeating it here in case anyone is just starting with this blog entry -- he was killed just two days after the publication of the REMHI report.
Behind him, scales of justice, and then the process of unearthing the dead. Women bearing wooden coffins on their heads, faces of the dead etched into the hillsides, corn planted among the crosses bearing the names of victims (one says "Mama", another "Papa" and so on). Behind them, a Mayan priest or guía espiritual (spiritual guide) indicated by the flowing red scarf around his head. He and others are gathered around a sacred fire -- a constant element of Mayan ceremoniality.
We then move onto the possibilities for the future: a woman kneels grieving at a grave site, while another woman is reaching out either to comfort her or to guide her away from the gravesite. They are both facing the past, although the second woman has one foot angled away from the past. A man clad in white with a red belt (traditional garments -- while most Mayan women in Zacualpa wear güipils and cortes, I've yet to see a man or boy wearing them except in the context of a ceremony or a dance performance) has his arm on the second woman, and one leg pointing to the viewer (the present). His other leg is angled towards the future, as he is following a heavily pregnant woman, who walks in front of him, signaling that new life and new possibilities await. Overlooking this all is a white-robed (and dark skinned) angel, with arms outspread.
My original connection with El Quiché, and the reason I had chosen to live in the department when I did my Fulbright in 2011, was through the Mayan community in New Bedford. Nearly all of the Maya in New Bedford were from El Quiché, and most of them were from 3 or 4 towns clustered in one part of the department: Chinique, Zacualpa, and San Andres Sajcabajá. There were a few from other towns: Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiché, and the Ixcán.
I had initially visited Zacualpa because several of the immigrants who were caught up in the 2007 ICE raid that resulted in 361 people being taken into detention were from Zacualpa, and I had come to visit their families. I had visited the parish hall several times during the years that I either lived in El Quiché or traveled there more regularly, but had never really systematically examined all the details and taken notes.
I was hoping to be able to talk to someone in the parish who was familiar with the history of the establishment of the two chapels that have been turned into memory sites. The nun whom I had met when I first traveled to Zacualpa in 2009, Sor Ana Maria, who had first shown me the chapel of torture, was no longer in Guatemala; I knew from her Facebook posts that she was doing mission work in Africa although I hadn't kept close tabs on her. Sor Ana Maria had taken me along with her in her jeep to visit some rural communities where she went to deliver messages against early marriage (families effectively selling off their 13 and 14-year old daughters). There was another woman I'd met at the church, named Juliana. She wasn't a nun but lived in the parish and worked there. People referred to her as Hermana (sister) Juliana, as distinguished from Sor -- which also means sister but refers specifically to a member of a religious order. She had always been very friendly to me, taking me to meet people in the community. Once she escorted me to the house of an older man who was involved in some of the parish's projects. I sometimes was invited to have tea or lunch with the nuns and Juliana.
But this was all years ago and I hadn't kept in touch with people in Zacualpa very much. One of the families of New Bedford migrants that I had visited many times ended up leaving Zacualpa and moving to another community because of threats; all the remaining members have now come to the United States.
So, I was trying to figure out how to re-establish some contact with someone there. There was a woman I'd met through the women's organization that I'd volunteered with, Asociación por Nosotras Ixmukané, named Doña Catarina Hernández or Doña Caty as most people called her. She was very active with a number of organizations, not just Ixmukané. She was a local leader with a national peasant rights organization, CCDA (the Comité Campesina para el Desarrollo del Altiplano), and a women's rights advocate. I'd been in touch with her a few times around 2012 and 2013because she had been helping someone I knew who was a victim of gender-based violence. We'd re-established contact through Facebook and I knew that she had become active in one of the small leftist political parties, Winaq (this was the party that had fielded Rigoberta Menchú for president in 2011). The word "winaq" means both "people" or "person" and the number 20 in K'iche'. I was taught that the reason the same word stands for both "person" and "20" is that we have 20 digits (10 toes, 10 fingers), so it's symbolic in Mayan mathematics.
I'd reached out to Doña Caty and explained (I thought) my project and asked if she could help find people in the parish who could talk with me. I'd specifically asked to see if she could find Juliana, because I'd read a description of the chapels However, she'd been very busy traveling around at meetings and workshops and the one time she'd been able to stop by the parish
Most of the times I've traveled to el Quiché it's been in my own vehicle, so I've had the freedom to leave when I wanted.. but also the necessity of dealing with asshole drivers (which abound in this country) and maneuvering in what is sometimes treacherous and endless traffic. Lines that snake and barely move for what seems like (and sometimes is) literally hours on end. There is often construction on some part of the Inter-American highway, the main roadway that runs roughly northwest from the capital. It just skirts the edge of El Quiché, at an intersection called Los Encuentros (the encounters) and then heads off towards Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, and the border will Mexico at a place called La Mesilla. There is a fork in the road at Los Encuentros; all sides of the intersection are lined with small food stands selling sausages, grilled corn, grilled meats, and other quick bites. The highway that continues on to the Mexican border is a four-lane road for part of the way, and then dwindles back to two lanes (I don't know what it does after Huehuetenango since I've never traveled farther north). But the road going into El Quiché is full of speed bumps and hairpin turns that wind up and down mountains. I think I once counted all the speed bumps between Los Encuentros and Chichicastenango, which is about 18 kilometers north, and there were over 60.
I packed my bags and got an Uber to take me to the bus "terminal" (basically just an area where a lot of buses line up in seeming chaos, and men roam around shouting out the names of destinations and hustling passengers onto the appropriate (one hopes) buses. I managed to get myself onto a bus to Los Encuentros, and aside from the always-interminable traffic leaving the city, the trip was uneventful. Well, and aside from the fact that the bus "jockey" whom I asked about buses to Zacualpa gave me incorrect information -- not surprising. Everyone around the bus terminal is being paid by drivers for one or another bus company -- there are countless small bus companies, all unregulated. We stopped and asked for the name of a particular company that Doña Caty had told me about, but were told that there weren't any more buses that day leaving directly from the capital. Because it was so chaotic at the terminal, and I had a large suitcase, and didn't want to go traipsing back and forth asking multiple times about buses, I agreed to get on a bus to Los Encuentros and change buses there. I was successfully deposited off the bus at Los Encuentros, made my way across the busy intersection to the road that heads off into El Quiché, only to see the exact bus that I had been looking for in the capital come by about 15 minutes later and take on passengers (one of whom was me). Fortunately, Doña Caty lives right along the bus route. I called her when I was getting close to Zacualpa and she asked to speak to the driver or the ayudante, saying "I travel on those buses all the time and I know all the drivers." So I passed the phone to the ayudante and she told him where to drop me (I had been to her house before, but traveling with a group so I hadn't had to really take note of exactly where it was situated along the main road).
Duly delivered at my destination, I then set out to see if I could talk with anyone at the parroquia. Doña Caty told me that she hadn't been able to get there until one evening that week, and by the time she arrived there really wasn't anyone around for her to talk with. So I decided that the best plan was just to walk over and see if I could talk to anyone, and if not, just take note of what I found.
The cloister where the nuns live is directly to the left as you face the main church building, which lies at one end of the central plaza of the town. There is a courtyard as you enter, with a large white cross in the center of the courtyard with the word "Martires" (Martyrs) spelled out in metal letters emanating from the top of the cross. The cross was added more recently, I think in 2012 or 2013 -- it definitely wasn't there when I visited Zacualpa numerous times in 2011. More recent additions include a slide and some swings for children who accompany their parents to church or market.
One side of the courtyard (to the right in this photo) is the external wall of the church). Straight ahead, the "back walls" of some of the rooms of the cloister. The other two sides contain offices and meeting rooms for various sub-entities of the parish, with a covered walkway (portico or colonnade, if you want to get all architectural) that provides shade, and also a place for people to sit as they wait -- either to be attended in one of the offices, or simply to have a place to rest. On market days (Sundays) the courtyard is usually pretty crowded with people seeking shade and seating. I rang the buzzer at the entrance to the cloister and a pleasant-faced nun answered. I explained what I was there for, that I had been to the church many times before, and had known Sor Ana Maria, and had spoken to Hermana Juliana in the past. She told me that she had only been at the parish for two years, and that Juliana had gone out and she wasn't sure when she would be back.
Therefore, I decided to use my time by just looking at the facilities and taking detailed notes. The first wall after you enter the cloister is covered with the mural that you see on the right. The legend at the top reads, "When everything (or everyone) came to light, that revived (or resuscitated) my people (or my town)."
The trajectory of the mural is similar to the much larger ones I saw at the Police Archives and later in Comalapa. You "read" the murals from left to right, and they start either with the "before" (before the invasion, before the war) or the "during", and then end with the aftermath and the future.
This one begins with the "during", with hamlets ablaze, people fleeing. Soldiers with automatic weapons loom over the scene of disaster, and one menacing helmeted soldier peers over. In the center is the church building with smoke coming out of the roof, followed by figures of priests and nuns. At the very center is the figure of Monseñor Juan Gerardi, the Archbishop of Guatemala City, who initiated the massive church-sponsored project of gathering testimonies about what happened in the armed conflict, La Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (The Recovery of Historical Memory, colloquially referred to as REMHI). I've written about Msr. Gerardi before but am repeating it here in case anyone is just starting with this blog entry -- he was killed just two days after the publication of the REMHI report. 
Behind him, scales of justice, and then the process of unearthing the dead. Women bearing wooden coffins on their heads, faces of the dead etched into the hillsides, corn planted among the crosses bearing the names of victims (one says "Mama", another "Papa" and so on). Behind them, a Mayan priest or guía espiritual (spiritual guide) indicated by the flowing red scarf around his head. He and others are gathered around a sacred fire -- a constant element of Mayan ceremoniality.
We then move onto the possibilities for the future: a woman kneels grieving at a grave site, while another woman is reaching out either to comfort her or to guide her away from the gravesite. They are both facing the past, although the second woman has one foot angled away from the past. A man clad in white with a red belt (traditional garments -- while most Mayan women in Zacualpa wear güipils and cortes, I've yet to see a man or boy wearing them except in the context of a ceremony or a dance performance) has his arm on the second woman, and one leg pointing to the viewer (the present). His other leg is angled towards the future, as he is following a heavily pregnant woman, who walks in front of him, signaling that new life and new possibilities await. Overlooking this all is a white-robed (and dark skinned) angel, with arms outspread.
"Safe third country"?
In the background of all my meanderings and musings about history has been the unfolding drama about the "safe third country" agreement that the U.S. was trying to force down Guatemala's throat. At the same time, I've continued to receive requests for expert testimony from lawyers representing Guatemalans, including some families who had been separated at the border. Yup, still going on, folks.
People here have been pissed off at President Morales pretty much since he was elected, since he rode into office on the coattails of a massive protest movement that went on for months and toppled the government of his predecessor, former general (and probably war criminal, as he was a military commander of the notorious G-2 in the Ixil region, where numerous massacres took place during the conflict) Otto Pérez Molina. Like Trump, Morales had no prior political experience and was an entertainer (known for his blackface performances and equally offensive caricatured portrayals of indigenous Guatemalans). He was supported by the military and has continued the same sorts of policies as Pérez Molina -- more privatization, more encouragement of foreign transnationals tearing up the environment against the wishes of the community, more criminal prosecutions (or attempted prosecutions) of indigenous and peasant leaders who have protested land grabs, energy rate hikes and the imposition of extractivist mega projects. There has also been a steep rise in the assassinations of indigenous and peasant leaders during his watch -- although the army and the police are not necessarily the ones who have pulled the triggers, but the government has been notoriously sluggish in its response to these assassinations. Swift to bring charges against those who protest, but foot-dragging in the extreme to investigate attacks, threats and assassinations of those protestors and protest organizers. 19 women leaders have been assassinated thus far in 2019 -- or at least that was the statistic on July 31. I don't have a figure offhand for men leaders who have suffered a similar fate but I'd wager that it's at least as high.
In addition, Guatemala has some of the highest rates in the hemisphere of chronic and extreme malnutrition, particularly of children. This is concentrated in some of the more remote and mostly rural departments with predominantly indigenous populations. We're talking about the kind of malnutrition that leads to permanent cognitive damage, not just hunger and distended bellies. Maternal mortality is high, as well as infant mortality. Schools in rural areas are inadequately funded, and in most areas in order to obtain an education beyond sixth grade (the end of primary school), it's necessary to travel to another town (walking for hours) because most rural areas don't offer anything beyond sixth grade. That implies expenses even if public schools are nominally free. You need shoes, you need books, you need a backpack, you need other supplies (since the schools usually don't have them). Poor families in areas with no running water, or limited potable water, scratching out a meager subsistence on hilly, rocky land, often need the labor of every family member -- water has to be carried, clothes have to be washed, crops planted, tended and gathered, firewood has to be gathered so that food can be cooked....
Extreme poverty -- as defined by the United Nations -- also characterizes these rural areas. There is little paid employment, and wages for agricultural work (people who don't have land of their own to farm, or insufficient land, hire themselves out to their neighbors) are extremely low. Because of years of drought, there have been crop failures in many areas. I traveled through areas where the corn - the staple of most people's diet -- had all withered. What do people do when they have nothing to eat? They can go into debt -- mortgaging their homes or their lands, taking out loans at usurious rates of interest. Many money lenders charge 10% compounded monthly. Yup, you got that right. The debt load increases exponentially. People borrow money to migrate in order to repay the debts they have already incurred.
A few days ago a feminist colleague here posted a statistic about unwanted pregnancies among girls: over 100,000 in 2018 alone (this from a report published on the Human Rights Ombudsman's webpage). The overwhelming majority of pregnancies among girls under the age of 15 or 16 is rape or incest and often both -- young girls are subject to sexual assault by their older brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, stepfathers. I was stunned by the statistic. I work on sexual assault asylum cases and I've read the affidavits of women and girls who have detailed how their male relatives abused them, often threatening them with physical harm if they told any. Other relatives often discredit the girls' accounts if they do dare to "tell". So the girls learn to hide their pain and keep their stories of rape and violence to themselves. When they become pregnant -- as many obviously do; no one is using condoms when they rape a child and clearly no child is in a position to demand that one be used, presuming that she even knows the basics of human reproduction -- they are sometimes kicked out by their families.
The case of the 43 girls who died in the Hogar Seguro (ironically, "Safe Home") fire -- a shelter for abandoned, runaway, or "problem" girls -- on International Women's Day in 2017 is another instance of the state being incapable or unwilling to protect its citizens, including the most vulnerable. Short history: the shelter was notorious for poor treatment of the girls and boys interned there(lack of recreation and educational facilities -- it is supposed to be a shelter, not a prison), and there were numerous complaints of sexual abuse, dating back at least to 2013. None of the residents had criminal charges against them, but were in the facility for a variety of reasons. Some of the young people staged a breakout on March 7. They were captured and returned; the staff locked some of the girls into a very small space known as "the school" as punishment and to prevent another breakout. The facility's staff called President Morales to inform him of the situation. On March 8, International Women's Day, the residents had planned to protest the physical and sexual abuse but a fire broke out. The firefighters were not able to gain access because there were locked doors. Several girls were already dead by the time authorities were able to get in, and others died in the hospital from burns and CO2 poisoning.
The tragedy led to a series of protests, since many hold the state accountable for what happened -- for not investigating several years' worth of complaints about sexual abuse and other mistreatment of minors in its tutelage, for not holding the facility's staff accountable (which contributed to a climate that gave license to the staff to lock the girls into a small space, which they somehow were then unable to unlock when a fire broke out???). #FueElEstado (it was the state) was the slogan of the subsequent protests.
So, if the state cannot protect its own citizens, if it cannot provide potable water, education, health care, employment and security to its own citizens, what can it possibly provide to Hondurans and Salvadorans escaping similar situations in their own countries?
People here have been pissed off at President Morales pretty much since he was elected, since he rode into office on the coattails of a massive protest movement that went on for months and toppled the government of his predecessor, former general (and probably war criminal, as he was a military commander of the notorious G-2 in the Ixil region, where numerous massacres took place during the conflict) Otto Pérez Molina. Like Trump, Morales had no prior political experience and was an entertainer (known for his blackface performances and equally offensive caricatured portrayals of indigenous Guatemalans). He was supported by the military and has continued the same sorts of policies as Pérez Molina -- more privatization, more encouragement of foreign transnationals tearing up the environment against the wishes of the community, more criminal prosecutions (or attempted prosecutions) of indigenous and peasant leaders who have protested land grabs, energy rate hikes and the imposition of extractivist mega projects. There has also been a steep rise in the assassinations of indigenous and peasant leaders during his watch -- although the army and the police are not necessarily the ones who have pulled the triggers, but the government has been notoriously sluggish in its response to these assassinations. Swift to bring charges against those who protest, but foot-dragging in the extreme to investigate attacks, threats and assassinations of those protestors and protest organizers. 19 women leaders have been assassinated thus far in 2019 -- or at least that was the statistic on July 31. I don't have a figure offhand for men leaders who have suffered a similar fate but I'd wager that it's at least as high.
In addition, Guatemala has some of the highest rates in the hemisphere of chronic and extreme malnutrition, particularly of children. This is concentrated in some of the more remote and mostly rural departments with predominantly indigenous populations. We're talking about the kind of malnutrition that leads to permanent cognitive damage, not just hunger and distended bellies. Maternal mortality is high, as well as infant mortality. Schools in rural areas are inadequately funded, and in most areas in order to obtain an education beyond sixth grade (the end of primary school), it's necessary to travel to another town (walking for hours) because most rural areas don't offer anything beyond sixth grade. That implies expenses even if public schools are nominally free. You need shoes, you need books, you need a backpack, you need other supplies (since the schools usually don't have them). Poor families in areas with no running water, or limited potable water, scratching out a meager subsistence on hilly, rocky land, often need the labor of every family member -- water has to be carried, clothes have to be washed, crops planted, tended and gathered, firewood has to be gathered so that food can be cooked....
Extreme poverty -- as defined by the United Nations -- also characterizes these rural areas. There is little paid employment, and wages for agricultural work (people who don't have land of their own to farm, or insufficient land, hire themselves out to their neighbors) are extremely low. Because of years of drought, there have been crop failures in many areas. I traveled through areas where the corn - the staple of most people's diet -- had all withered. What do people do when they have nothing to eat? They can go into debt -- mortgaging their homes or their lands, taking out loans at usurious rates of interest. Many money lenders charge 10% compounded monthly. Yup, you got that right. The debt load increases exponentially. People borrow money to migrate in order to repay the debts they have already incurred.
A few days ago a feminist colleague here posted a statistic about unwanted pregnancies among girls: over 100,000 in 2018 alone (this from a report published on the Human Rights Ombudsman's webpage). The overwhelming majority of pregnancies among girls under the age of 15 or 16 is rape or incest and often both -- young girls are subject to sexual assault by their older brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, stepfathers. I was stunned by the statistic. I work on sexual assault asylum cases and I've read the affidavits of women and girls who have detailed how their male relatives abused them, often threatening them with physical harm if they told any. Other relatives often discredit the girls' accounts if they do dare to "tell". So the girls learn to hide their pain and keep their stories of rape and violence to themselves. When they become pregnant -- as many obviously do; no one is using condoms when they rape a child and clearly no child is in a position to demand that one be used, presuming that she even knows the basics of human reproduction -- they are sometimes kicked out by their families.
The case of the 43 girls who died in the Hogar Seguro (ironically, "Safe Home") fire -- a shelter for abandoned, runaway, or "problem" girls -- on International Women's Day in 2017 is another instance of the state being incapable or unwilling to protect its citizens, including the most vulnerable. Short history: the shelter was notorious for poor treatment of the girls and boys interned there(lack of recreation and educational facilities -- it is supposed to be a shelter, not a prison), and there were numerous complaints of sexual abuse, dating back at least to 2013. None of the residents had criminal charges against them, but were in the facility for a variety of reasons. Some of the young people staged a breakout on March 7. They were captured and returned; the staff locked some of the girls into a very small space known as "the school" as punishment and to prevent another breakout. The facility's staff called President Morales to inform him of the situation. On March 8, International Women's Day, the residents had planned to protest the physical and sexual abuse but a fire broke out. The firefighters were not able to gain access because there were locked doors. Several girls were already dead by the time authorities were able to get in, and others died in the hospital from burns and CO2 poisoning.
The tragedy led to a series of protests, since many hold the state accountable for what happened -- for not investigating several years' worth of complaints about sexual abuse and other mistreatment of minors in its tutelage, for not holding the facility's staff accountable (which contributed to a climate that gave license to the staff to lock the girls into a small space, which they somehow were then unable to unlock when a fire broke out???). #FueElEstado (it was the state) was the slogan of the subsequent protests.
So, if the state cannot protect its own citizens, if it cannot provide potable water, education, health care, employment and security to its own citizens, what can it possibly provide to Hondurans and Salvadorans escaping similar situations in their own countries?
Friday, August 2, 2019
Urban traces: more plaques
As part of this sprawling project, I visited a few additional sites in the capital, ones that I either hadn't known about previously or ones that for one reason or another I hadn't visited, and revisited a few that happened to be relatively nearby. These are mostly markers for individuals who were assassinated or kidnapped in broad daylight. One was the home of Myrna Mack Chang, a Guatemalan anthropologist of Chinese descent. She was one of the pioneering Guatemalan scholars who documented and wrote about the impact of the war on indigenous populations. She focused on the internally displaced populations and the human rights consequences. She was affiliated with AVANSCO, one of the major social science research institutes and in 1990 she was stabbed as she left the office. The AVANSCO office is now in a different location on the Sexta Avenida, the principal thoroughfare of the Zona 1, and there is a brass plaque on the side of the building which I've seen before (I ran past it because my usual running route heads along la Sexta, but I didn't stop and photograph it again). This time I set out for her former residence, which is a different part of Zona 1, on 12th Calle and 12 Avenida. There is a plaque on the building and also at the entrance to the street, there is a hand-painted street sign on the side of the first building on the block, "Calle Myrna Mack". As has been the case with nearly every other urban historical marker I've visited and photographed, I was the only person paying attention to the sign and the location. There was a bus coming along the street; there was a woman in a small store across the street. A few people walking along, but the street was not crowded with either traffic or pedestrians.
I also visited the site at the back of the Cathedral (not actually on the Cathedral building but behind it on 8th Avenida, on the side of a building, a plaque for a young Filipino Catholic priest, Conrado de la Cruz, who was doing missionary work in Guatemala, and forcibly disappeared at that site, presumably on his way to or from the Cathedral.
There was an additional plaque inside the Museum of the University of San Carlos, the country's large public university. The main campus is located pretty far away in another part of town, and there are apparently a number of plaques there, but there is one building in Zona 1, which houses the university's museum. It's pretty much directly across from the Congress so convenient for protests (closing off the street in front of the Congress building is another time-honored protest in Guatemala). University students (and faculty) were key targets for forced disappearances, especially as there were student mobilizations and protests starting fairly early in the 1960s. There was a display of student art work around the walls of the courtyard and a few small exhibits in other rooms -- one on the history of the university, another on the varied cultures of Guatemala (a teeny-tiny ethnographic/cultural exhibit, just one small room with some ceramics, indigenous textiles and a few other things) and an exhibit of works inspired by a deceased Norwegian artist who apparently spent some time in Guatemala.
The plaque was in honor of a law professor. Dr. Alfredo Mijangos López, who was assassinated in 1971 -- again, during the earlier part of the civil war. He wasn't someone I had heard about previously but I dutifully photographed the plaque.
I didn't visit or photograph every single site in the capital -- they have been catalogued elsewhere, or at least most of them, in the Mapeo de la Memoria, a website that is devoted to memory sites of the armed conflict. I could have just looked at the website and read the descriptions there -- some of the sites have full-blown essays including interviews with the people who were instrument in establishing the memory sites -- but I needed to get a "feel" for the overall context, how the sites look and feel and are engaged with (or mostly not) in the larger city scape.
I know, from talking to people, that there are ceremonies held at several of these sites each year on the anniversary of the person's disappearance, abduction or execution. People lay wreaths, place flowers, make temporary shrines, to commemorate the person. I haven't been at any of those -- my trips haven't coincided with any of those dates as far as I know -- but I've seen photographs.
I also visited the site at the back of the Cathedral (not actually on the Cathedral building but behind it on 8th Avenida, on the side of a building, a plaque for a young Filipino Catholic priest, Conrado de la Cruz, who was doing missionary work in Guatemala, and forcibly disappeared at that site, presumably on his way to or from the Cathedral.
There was an additional plaque inside the Museum of the University of San Carlos, the country's large public university. The main campus is located pretty far away in another part of town, and there are apparently a number of plaques there, but there is one building in Zona 1, which houses the university's museum. It's pretty much directly across from the Congress so convenient for protests (closing off the street in front of the Congress building is another time-honored protest in Guatemala). University students (and faculty) were key targets for forced disappearances, especially as there were student mobilizations and protests starting fairly early in the 1960s. There was a display of student art work around the walls of the courtyard and a few small exhibits in other rooms -- one on the history of the university, another on the varied cultures of Guatemala (a teeny-tiny ethnographic/cultural exhibit, just one small room with some ceramics, indigenous textiles and a few other things) and an exhibit of works inspired by a deceased Norwegian artist who apparently spent some time in Guatemala.
The plaque was in honor of a law professor. Dr. Alfredo Mijangos López, who was assassinated in 1971 -- again, during the earlier part of the civil war. He wasn't someone I had heard about previously but I dutifully photographed the plaque.
I didn't visit or photograph every single site in the capital -- they have been catalogued elsewhere, or at least most of them, in the Mapeo de la Memoria, a website that is devoted to memory sites of the armed conflict. I could have just looked at the website and read the descriptions there -- some of the sites have full-blown essays including interviews with the people who were instrument in establishing the memory sites -- but I needed to get a "feel" for the overall context, how the sites look and feel and are engaged with (or mostly not) in the larger city scape.
I know, from talking to people, that there are ceremonies held at several of these sites each year on the anniversary of the person's disappearance, abduction or execution. People lay wreaths, place flowers, make temporary shrines, to commemorate the person. I haven't been at any of those -- my trips haven't coincided with any of those dates as far as I know -- but I've seen photographs.
Visiting the National Police Archives
While I was in Guatemala City, before heading out to visit memory sites in the "rural areas" of Zacualpa, Nebaj and Rabinal, I decided to pay a visit to the National Police Archives. They are not a memory site in precisely the same way, but they have played an important role in unearthing some of the many "buried secrets" of the war.
The story of how the archives came to be has been told but perhaps you haven't read it, so I'll summarize. Almost a decade after the war ended with the 1996 peace accords, in 2005, there was an important discovery. In an abandoned hospital building, decrepit and rat-infested (gotta include the "rat infested" part) that had belonged to the now-disbanded National Police (effectively an arm of the Guatemalan military during the war), someone discovered boxes upon boxes of moldering, dusty files. The Peace Accords had ostensibly paved the way for a public reckoning for the actions of the police and military during the war, but both had steadfastly claimed that they had kept no records of their activities. Well, we shouldn't be surprised that they were lying all along. There were approximately 80 million (yes, you read that right: 80,000,000) documents in the abandoned hospital, that turned out to be archives of the National Police dating back to the 1880s, providing ample documentation of massacres, forced disappearances, executions, and much more. Gotcha!
The archives have proven to be an invaluable resource for those dedicating to holding the material and intellectual authors of those war crimes accountable. Researchers, attorneys and others have used the material in the archives to support successful legal cases that have led to convictions of military commanders and others. Information in the National Police Archives was used in the genocide trial against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (convicted for genocide but the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction). The U.S. has also used information in the archives to track down war criminals who managed to relocate in the U.S., and in some cases send them back to face justice in Guatemala.
So the archives are kind of a big deal. And they have been under siege almost since their discovery -- by those forces who would prefer that the past remain buried and inaccessible. The U.S. has put money into their preservation. The University of Texas Austin, one of the major centers for Latin American studies in the U.S. and the host of massive physical and online archives in Latin American Studies, started to digitize the files. But recently, under the Morales administration, the attacks have stepped up. The former director of the archives was fired in 2018 by the United Nations program that had supported the archives. And most recently the Guatemalan government --specifically the Minister of the Interior, Enrique Degenhart, the guy who signed the "safe third country" agreement -- has moved to put the archives under the control of the National Civil Police and restrict access to the archives.
So, shortly after the conference I helped organize in Antigua ended and I came back to Guatemala City for a few days, I decided to make a visit to the archives. To get to the archive, you have to go through the gate of the police headquarters that is located there. I took an Uber to get there -- yes, in Guatemala and in Tijuana I've used Uber because that's what many of my Guatemalan female colleagues do; they find Uber to be safer and more reliable than hailing a taxi on the street -- several women I know have been robbed by taxi drivers. Most of us have telephone numbers of a few reliable drivers we know personally, but they are not always available when one needs them, and they are usually quite a bit more expensive than Uber (for example, an Uber from the airport to Zona 1 cost around Q30, and the taxi driver that the guest house uses charges Q100 for the same ride). I wasn't coming from somewhere with a good public transportation connection, so a ride service was a better way to go. The archives per se were not marked in any way that was visible from the road. We saw a sign for the Policia Nacional Civil, but nothing for the archives. We pulled over and asked and I was told that it was inside the PNC facility.
There were several buildings spread around a large field. There was a guard near the entrance and I explained where I was going and he escorted me to the archive building, which was around a bend. There were some abandoned police vehicles under a tree on the left-hand side, and there were brightly painted murals on some walls that set off the main archive building -- or at least the part that is open to the public. There were a couple of large modern sculptures on either side of the entrance, and the painted brick building did indeed look like the hospital it once was.
You can't just wander through rooms of file and poke around. In order to actually obtain information about a specific person or incident, you have to fill out a request -- you can do that online or by using a paper form you can get at the archive. The archive staff will then search through the databases they have and other files and let you know if they have found information about the person or the event you requested.
But they do have a small museum-like display in the reception area of the archive that traces some of the history that I've just laid out -- the discovery of the archives, the forensic work of clearing out the dirt, literally excavating the papers, retrieving and sorting and organizing the files. Part of the display recreates how the archives looked when they were discovered-- papers strewn all around, and then phase of archivists wearing gloves and masks sorting through the rubble, much like a rescue crew at a disaster site or a CSI team. There are reproductions of some of the materials found in the files, and some original equipment like an old typewriter and some furniture.
I spoke with a personable young woman who had worked at the archive when it was first discovered, and then had left to do other work, and had only returned two years ago. She explained the procedures to me, and asked if I wanted to put in a request. I explained that I wasn't actually looking for anyone -- although it did occur to me that one of my collaborators in New Bedford, who had lost family members in the conflicto armado, might want to look for information about his siblings who had been killed. I sent him a message and asked if he wanted to search, but he responded that thinking about that time was difficult for him. I took a copy of the request form nonetheless.
Outside, I spent some time looking at the murals that were painted on the walls. One long mural started from the left with a portrait of a benevolent Monseñor Gerardi, the archbishop of Guatemala City who led one of the truth commissions after the war and was assassinated two days after the publication of the report he co-authored. The next part of the mural contains scenes of "before" -- a Mayan pyramid, ears of corn, a woman kneeling before a backstrap loom in front of a forested landscape, a cooking fire burning. And then a small crowd of people holding signs and banners at a protest, asking for "Justicia" (justice). There is an image of a soldier's boot looming over this peaceful landscape.
Unlike some other murals I've seen about the war -- I'll talk in a future post about the murals on the walls of the cloister that forms part of the Parroquia (parish) in Zacualpa, Quiché -- there is no imagery that directly references the destruction and death of the armed conflict. There are scenes that indicate the process of rebuilding and flourishing in the "after" part -- generally, in the several murals I've seen, there is a historical progression from left to right, and the panels farthest to the right indicate the present or a bright and hopeful path for the future. The last panel on this particular mural shows children with their arms outstretched and a large aquatic creature (medusa? octopus?) floating horizontally in the foreground.
The words are "Memoria" (memory) and "Vida" (life). Memory is life, life is memory. Memory is constructed out of bricks, and birds are flying overhead.
There are some other murals on the other side of the entrance but they were partially obscured by the parked police vehicles. One (visible above, on the farthest left hand panel) shows some skulls, and obviously reflects the unearthing of the bodies of massacre victims.
I made my way back out to the street and walked a few blocks to get to the Transmetro stop. I was surprised to pass a small shop selling police gear: guns, hats, vests and other military/police paraphernalia.
There was no proprietor visible, otherwise I would have asked whether this was an official store where officers bought their equipment, and whether they checked to see if the people making purchases were indeed police officers, or whether just anyone off the street - me, for example -could walk in and buy a PNC hat (just like you see people in the U.S. who are not necessarily police or firefighters wearing NYPD or NYFD logos).
I continued on to the Transmetro, and decided to walk through the Plaza de la Constitución, the main plaza in front of the National Cathedral and the Palacio Presidencial -- the presidential palace (the equivalent of the White House although I don't think the president actually resides there so not exactly equivalent). The plaza is a multivalent and multi-use space. On Sundays indigenous vendors from all over who have resettled in the capital set up booths and ply their wares, including clothing, toys, and food -- if you're looking for an inexpensive and "authentic" (whatever that means) bite on a Sunday afternoon or evening, you can get an assortment of Guatemalan street food -- boiled sweet potatoes (camotes), boiled and grilled corn, boiled güisquil (chayote), reheated plain tamales with black beans or chipilín, pupusas, tacos and other delights.
It is also a favored spot for demonstrations, for itinerant vendors hawking medicines, pushcart peddlers with sliced fruit.
On this day, however, as I walked across the plaza I was startled by the sight of a large continent of people in military-style uniforms and bearing arms. I thought it was the army at first, but it turned out to be a group of environmental police, dressed in camouflage uniforms, with weapons, vests, and displaying some turtle shells and a cage possibly containing a live animal.
One officer was holding forth about how important it was to not throw litter, to protect Mother Nature, and so forth. There was a circle of people watching and sort of listening. A bouncy house for kids seemed to get getting some use, and there were two large inflatable very friendly-looking police officers --one male, and one female. Did I mention that the inflatable police were white - in a country where most people, not just those who identify as indigenous, are some shade of tan or brown? A little incongruous, to say the least. And one wonders why environmental police are so heavily armed. Surely not to protect rural campesinos and subsistence farmers whose lands and lives are threatened by environmentally destructive dams, mining operations and palm oil plantations, who are routinely killed (19 women land defenders so far in 2019) for trying to protect their lands.
So it was a bit jarring to go from the archives, which contain the gory details of how the police collaborated in torture, rape, forced disappearance, assassinations and mass killings, to a public display of the ostensibly benign and friendly face of the police (although the contrast between the smiling and unarmed inflatables and the battle-ready live policemen on the scene was notable). Bad cop/good cop indeed.
But the ironies don't stop there. Right behind the environmental police's "meet and greet", there are two notable markers on the very surface of the plaza itself. Directly in front of the Palacio Nacional, now shrouded in black gauze for some reconstruction and repair work, the group H.I.J.O.S. -- founded by children of victims of the armed conflict -- has painted in immense yellow letters: "45,000. Donde están?" (45,000-- where are they). 45,000 is the statistic usually given for the number of forced disappearances (which as I noted in an earlier post, was the tactic used by the military and police in the cities, and it started long before the "scorched earth" policy of total destruction of communities and mass killings that many view as the characteristic of the armed conflict. H.I.J.O.S. is very active in Zona 1, the historic center of Guatemala City, and as I have noted in previous posts, they continually plaster the walls with blocks of flyers. I'm not sure if the poster on the left is theirs or from another group, but opposition groups make use of the walls of cafes, stores, and other businesses in Zona 1 to get their messages across.
A little farther into the heart of the plaza is a memorial to another kind of mass killing: the deaths of 43 girls who were trapped in a fire at a shelter for abandoned or runaway children (well, it's more complicated than that but that will serve as a shorthand for the kind of shelter). The fire was on March 8, 2017, and on the 8th of every month women's groups and others hold a vigil in the Plaza. There is also graffiti painted on the pavement with the girls' names, and a small plaque set in the pavement as well. Now a somewhat more permanent set of markers has been added -- flowerpots filled with cement or sand, into which metal crosses have been inserted, each cross decorated with a small crocheted patch. It immediately called to mind a lot of feminist art practices that make use of "crafts" that are typically associated with women (and thus designated as "craft" and not as "art").
Both the ephemeral and the more permanent tell stories, sometimes the same stories in different registers, and at others different parts of the same story, or complementary or contrasting stories.
These silhouettes, now partially faded, remind me of a public art project I worked on in Atlanta 25 years ago, "Entering Buttermilk Bottom", marking a neighborhood that had been destroyed by urban renewal, an historically Black neighborhood. For one part of the project, we mapped out on the surface of the parking lot of the Atlantic Civic Center, the houses that had been demolished in order to make way for the Civic Center and its parking lot. When we went to talk to one of the directors of the Civic Center, to get permission to paint on the parking lot, we assured him that we had found a non-permanent paint that would adhere to the asphalt surface, but would fade away within several months. It turned out he was a former resident of the neighborhood, and said, "Oh, go ahead and use paint that will stay on as long as possible".
The story of how the archives came to be has been told but perhaps you haven't read it, so I'll summarize. Almost a decade after the war ended with the 1996 peace accords, in 2005, there was an important discovery. In an abandoned hospital building, decrepit and rat-infested (gotta include the "rat infested" part) that had belonged to the now-disbanded National Police (effectively an arm of the Guatemalan military during the war), someone discovered boxes upon boxes of moldering, dusty files. The Peace Accords had ostensibly paved the way for a public reckoning for the actions of the police and military during the war, but both had steadfastly claimed that they had kept no records of their activities. Well, we shouldn't be surprised that they were lying all along. There were approximately 80 million (yes, you read that right: 80,000,000) documents in the abandoned hospital, that turned out to be archives of the National Police dating back to the 1880s, providing ample documentation of massacres, forced disappearances, executions, and much more. Gotcha!
The archives have proven to be an invaluable resource for those dedicating to holding the material and intellectual authors of those war crimes accountable. Researchers, attorneys and others have used the material in the archives to support successful legal cases that have led to convictions of military commanders and others. Information in the National Police Archives was used in the genocide trial against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (convicted for genocide but the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction). The U.S. has also used information in the archives to track down war criminals who managed to relocate in the U.S., and in some cases send them back to face justice in Guatemala.
So the archives are kind of a big deal. And they have been under siege almost since their discovery -- by those forces who would prefer that the past remain buried and inaccessible. The U.S. has put money into their preservation. The University of Texas Austin, one of the major centers for Latin American studies in the U.S. and the host of massive physical and online archives in Latin American Studies, started to digitize the files. But recently, under the Morales administration, the attacks have stepped up. The former director of the archives was fired in 2018 by the United Nations program that had supported the archives. And most recently the Guatemalan government --specifically the Minister of the Interior, Enrique Degenhart, the guy who signed the "safe third country" agreement -- has moved to put the archives under the control of the National Civil Police and restrict access to the archives.
There were several buildings spread around a large field. There was a guard near the entrance and I explained where I was going and he escorted me to the archive building, which was around a bend. There were some abandoned police vehicles under a tree on the left-hand side, and there were brightly painted murals on some walls that set off the main archive building -- or at least the part that is open to the public. There were a couple of large modern sculptures on either side of the entrance, and the painted brick building did indeed look like the hospital it once was.
You can't just wander through rooms of file and poke around. In order to actually obtain information about a specific person or incident, you have to fill out a request -- you can do that online or by using a paper form you can get at the archive. The archive staff will then search through the databases they have and other files and let you know if they have found information about the person or the event you requested.
But they do have a small museum-like display in the reception area of the archive that traces some of the history that I've just laid out -- the discovery of the archives, the forensic work of clearing out the dirt, literally excavating the papers, retrieving and sorting and organizing the files. Part of the display recreates how the archives looked when they were discovered-- papers strewn all around, and then phase of archivists wearing gloves and masks sorting through the rubble, much like a rescue crew at a disaster site or a CSI team. There are reproductions of some of the materials found in the files, and some original equipment like an old typewriter and some furniture.
I spoke with a personable young woman who had worked at the archive when it was first discovered, and then had left to do other work, and had only returned two years ago. She explained the procedures to me, and asked if I wanted to put in a request. I explained that I wasn't actually looking for anyone -- although it did occur to me that one of my collaborators in New Bedford, who had lost family members in the conflicto armado, might want to look for information about his siblings who had been killed. I sent him a message and asked if he wanted to search, but he responded that thinking about that time was difficult for him. I took a copy of the request form nonetheless.
Outside, I spent some time looking at the murals that were painted on the walls. One long mural started from the left with a portrait of a benevolent Monseñor Gerardi, the archbishop of Guatemala City who led one of the truth commissions after the war and was assassinated two days after the publication of the report he co-authored. The next part of the mural contains scenes of "before" -- a Mayan pyramid, ears of corn, a woman kneeling before a backstrap loom in front of a forested landscape, a cooking fire burning. And then a small crowd of people holding signs and banners at a protest, asking for "Justicia" (justice). There is an image of a soldier's boot looming over this peaceful landscape.
Unlike some other murals I've seen about the war -- I'll talk in a future post about the murals on the walls of the cloister that forms part of the Parroquia (parish) in Zacualpa, Quiché -- there is no imagery that directly references the destruction and death of the armed conflict. There are scenes that indicate the process of rebuilding and flourishing in the "after" part -- generally, in the several murals I've seen, there is a historical progression from left to right, and the panels farthest to the right indicate the present or a bright and hopeful path for the future. The last panel on this particular mural shows children with their arms outstretched and a large aquatic creature (medusa? octopus?) floating horizontally in the foreground.
The words are "Memoria" (memory) and "Vida" (life). Memory is life, life is memory. Memory is constructed out of bricks, and birds are flying overhead.
There are some other murals on the other side of the entrance but they were partially obscured by the parked police vehicles. One (visible above, on the farthest left hand panel) shows some skulls, and obviously reflects the unearthing of the bodies of massacre victims.
I made my way back out to the street and walked a few blocks to get to the Transmetro stop. I was surprised to pass a small shop selling police gear: guns, hats, vests and other military/police paraphernalia.
There was no proprietor visible, otherwise I would have asked whether this was an official store where officers bought their equipment, and whether they checked to see if the people making purchases were indeed police officers, or whether just anyone off the street - me, for example -could walk in and buy a PNC hat (just like you see people in the U.S. who are not necessarily police or firefighters wearing NYPD or NYFD logos).
I continued on to the Transmetro, and decided to walk through the Plaza de la Constitución, the main plaza in front of the National Cathedral and the Palacio Presidencial -- the presidential palace (the equivalent of the White House although I don't think the president actually resides there so not exactly equivalent). The plaza is a multivalent and multi-use space. On Sundays indigenous vendors from all over who have resettled in the capital set up booths and ply their wares, including clothing, toys, and food -- if you're looking for an inexpensive and "authentic" (whatever that means) bite on a Sunday afternoon or evening, you can get an assortment of Guatemalan street food -- boiled sweet potatoes (camotes), boiled and grilled corn, boiled güisquil (chayote), reheated plain tamales with black beans or chipilín, pupusas, tacos and other delights.
It is also a favored spot for demonstrations, for itinerant vendors hawking medicines, pushcart peddlers with sliced fruit.
One officer was holding forth about how important it was to not throw litter, to protect Mother Nature, and so forth. There was a circle of people watching and sort of listening. A bouncy house for kids seemed to get getting some use, and there were two large inflatable very friendly-looking police officers --one male, and one female. Did I mention that the inflatable police were white - in a country where most people, not just those who identify as indigenous, are some shade of tan or brown? A little incongruous, to say the least. And one wonders why environmental police are so heavily armed. Surely not to protect rural campesinos and subsistence farmers whose lands and lives are threatened by environmentally destructive dams, mining operations and palm oil plantations, who are routinely killed (19 women land defenders so far in 2019) for trying to protect their lands.
So it was a bit jarring to go from the archives, which contain the gory details of how the police collaborated in torture, rape, forced disappearance, assassinations and mass killings, to a public display of the ostensibly benign and friendly face of the police (although the contrast between the smiling and unarmed inflatables and the battle-ready live policemen on the scene was notable). Bad cop/good cop indeed.
But the ironies don't stop there. Right behind the environmental police's "meet and greet", there are two notable markers on the very surface of the plaza itself. Directly in front of the Palacio Nacional, now shrouded in black gauze for some reconstruction and repair work, the group H.I.J.O.S. -- founded by children of victims of the armed conflict -- has painted in immense yellow letters: "45,000. Donde están?" (45,000-- where are they). 45,000 is the statistic usually given for the number of forced disappearances (which as I noted in an earlier post, was the tactic used by the military and police in the cities, and it started long before the "scorched earth" policy of total destruction of communities and mass killings that many view as the characteristic of the armed conflict. H.I.J.O.S. is very active in Zona 1, the historic center of Guatemala City, and as I have noted in previous posts, they continually plaster the walls with blocks of flyers. I'm not sure if the poster on the left is theirs or from another group, but opposition groups make use of the walls of cafes, stores, and other businesses in Zona 1 to get their messages across.
Both the ephemeral and the more permanent tell stories, sometimes the same stories in different registers, and at others different parts of the same story, or complementary or contrasting stories.
These silhouettes, now partially faded, remind me of a public art project I worked on in Atlanta 25 years ago, "Entering Buttermilk Bottom", marking a neighborhood that had been destroyed by urban renewal, an historically Black neighborhood. For one part of the project, we mapped out on the surface of the parking lot of the Atlantic Civic Center, the houses that had been demolished in order to make way for the Civic Center and its parking lot. When we went to talk to one of the directors of the Civic Center, to get permission to paint on the parking lot, we assured him that we had found a non-permanent paint that would adhere to the asphalt surface, but would fade away within several months. It turned out he was a former resident of the neighborhood, and said, "Oh, go ahead and use paint that will stay on as long as possible".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)